Love & Rage Archive

To the Editors:

In an article in the November/December 1994 issue of Love and Rage, I wrote that white people are those who enjoy the privileges of the white skin, among which are "expecting, if they are female, that the state will protect them from strangers." In a note appended to my article, the editorial board wrote that the women on it "strongly disagree" with my statement, which "runs contrary to the newspaper's commitment to recognizing the way in which state power is used to uphold patriarchy."

It is true that the state upholds the patriarchy, but like every other form of domination, the patriarchy is decisively shaped by white supremacy. In this society, the black woman is public property, the white woman is private property. The state protects the white woman from strangers (not from her husband, father, uncles and brothers), not because it cares for her as a person but because she is the property of a white man, and the job of the state is to protect private property. The state does not protect the black woman from strangers because it does not respect the property rights of the black man. Of course it does not completely protect the white man's woman, any more than it protects his car or his stereo; but it tries, and statistics show that the safest thing to be in this country is a white woman.

Those who disagreed with my statement offered as evidence their own experience of being harassed by police or physically abused in the presence of police who turned the other way. I don't question their accounts; indeed they prove my point: they come f rom women who show in their dress and manner that they have chosen not to be the property of any man, and therefore have placed themselves beyond the shield of whiteness.

That is a very un-white thing to do and I should think that as anarchists the women on the editorial board would consider it a badge of honor that they are not entirely part of the white race (an oppressive social formation). Instead, they insist on identifying themselves as "white women." Well, they can't have it both ways: either they act like white women ("ladies") and subject themselves to the degrading protection of the patriarchal state that despises them, or they renounce that particular white-s kin privilege. If they renounce it, they must recognize that in doing so they are taking a big step toward becoming something other than white, and can expect to be fair game for every pig in and out of uniform who wants to assert his masculine right over public property. Surely, they don't think they can take part in revolutionary politics while continuing to be white, or that they can cease to be white without paying the price.

Noel Ignatiev, co-editor Race Traitor
[contact information removed from web archive version]

October 30, 1994